Typing test

The largest study of typing speed we know of measured 168,960 volunteers who took an online typing test on computer keyboards^[1]. They copied English sentences, and their average was 51.56 words per minute, with a spread (standard deviation) of 20.2. Most people were within that spread of the average. A second study measured 37,370 people typing on their phones, with autocorrect and suggestions allowed, and found an average of 36.2 words per minute^[2].

This page uses single everyday words, not sentences, so it is a different task from the keyboard study. That is why we only say roughly where you are: one of five levels, from slower than most people to faster than most people. The levels are the five fifths of the keyboard study. If you typed on a phone's screen keyboard, the comparison is rougher still, because the study used computer keyboards; we also show the phone study's average as a mark.

Speed is only half of it. Accuracy matters too: under How we measured this you see how many of your letters were right, mistakes you fixed included, and how many mistakes were left in the words you finished.

The words come from the most common words of English in film and television subtitles, from a public word-frequency list. We removed names, rude words and very short or very long words, and kept the most common ones, so the test measures how fast you type and not how well you spell rare words. Every length of the test uses the same list, so a longer run is not a harder one.

The test reads what you type from the text box itself, letter by letter, and not from the keys you press. That way any keyboard layout works, and so do phone keyboards, which often do not say which key was pressed. When a phone keyboard puts letters together before showing them, as many do, we judge the word once it is finished.

Some runs are kept but not compared: when the keyboard filled in or corrected words, when the letters came as evenly as a machine types them, when too few whole words were typed, or when too few letters were right. We tell you which one it was, without blame. A run during which the page went into the background does not count at all, because we cannot know what happened in that time.

Practice matters most. People who type every day for work or school are usually faster than people who type now and then. Typing with all ten fingers, without looking at the keys, is faster than two fingers in the long run, though it feels slower for the first few weeks.

• Your keyboard: a full-size keyboard you know well is quicker than a laptop you rarely use.
• Your device: typing on a phone's screen is slower for most people than a keyboard.
• The words: common, short words are quicker to type than long or rare ones.
• Being tired or rushed: most people make more mistakes when they hurry.

1. Sit straight, with your wrists free and your fingers resting on the middle row of keys.
2. Look at the screen, not at your hands, even if it is slow at first.
3. Aim for no mistakes first. Speed comes with practice; fixing mistakes costs more time than typing a little slower.
4. Practise a few minutes every day rather than an hour once a week.
5. Take this test now and again and compare your results at the same length.